I received the following in an e-mail from Jamison Hutchins, Bicycle Coordinator with the Indianapolis Office of Sustainability.

As Indianapolis continues to add more bike lanes and trails, it is important to tell the story of how the addition of these facilities has resulted in an increase in usage. The Office of Sustainability, in partnership with Health by Design and INDYCOG will be coordinating to collect these valuable counts on our bikeways. This will help us begin to quantify what most of have been seeing on our streets – more people riding bikes.

There has been quite a bit of work done to develop a data collection process that can be used as a standard across the country, which allows cities to better understand how they compare. TheNational Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project has put together a very helpful toolkit to help with this collection process.

We will be conducting counts in different locations around Indianapolis on Tuesday, September 11th (rain day on the 12th) from 5:00pm-7:00pm and on Saturday, September 15th from 12:00pm-2pm to better understand weekend usage. There will be a short training session an hour before the collection times to insure that everyone is familiar with the methods and materials we will be using.

If you are interested in volunteering to help with the count, please contact Jamison Hutchins (Jamison.Hutchins@indy.gov; 317-327-5230) and he will sign you up and pass along more details.

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10 Responses to “ “Indy Bike Traffic Count campaign set to take place”

Not sure how DMC’s comment is more “constructive” than mine which simply pointed out that IndyCog and the Office of Sustainability have a conflict of interest when it comes to doing an honest count. It’s like asking your insurance agent if you need more insurance.

I think the first comment was pretty constructive actually. There are a lot of bike riders who need to be told that they need to follow regular traffic rules when riding their bikes on our public streets. I see many bicyclists riding the wrong way on one way streets, running stop signs, running stop lights, etc.

I see a lot of motorists breaking the rules as well. Just as with any type of minor traffic infraction, only a small minority ever get caught. I’ve eve seen motorists turn the wrong way on one way streets. Mostly on Illinois when getting off the I-65 ramp downtown, but sometimes on Penn as well.

I don’t understand the car-driver (and even some bicyclist) obsession with perfect law compliance by bicyclists when it is the rare driver who never exceeds the speed limit, fails to signal a turn, etc. Pure double standard and pure BS. I personally don’t buy in to the idea that cyclists have some moral responsibility to be “better” than car drivers for fear that drivers will hold a grudge against bicyclists who tactically and prudently disregard laws that are clearly designed for motorists. When bicyclists ride carelessly like some of the Jimmie Johns guys on downtown sidewalks, it’s a different story.

More on topic, this is a long overdue count since they’ve never been able to give an accurate count when asked. though I’m really surprised they aren’t getting a count in the morning. There are a bunch of cyclists every day who ride on the northwest-side to downtown taking ColdSpring Road and ride along the White River Greenway. Probably a good 40-50 right there. I think the group gets smaller in the evenings due to them getting off of work at different times.

Paul Ogden: When you are going to conduct a survey of the number of bicyclists who do you think is going to volunteer to do the count? The Sisters of the Poor? Of course it’s going to be a group with an interest in the results.

Or would you rather have the Girl Scouts do the Mitt Romney tracking polls than Rasmussen Reports?